Cafe Royal
A tavern has traded on this corner since 1826, and two hundred years on the bar still gets through about a thousand Cumbrae rock oysters a week.
Why go
The oysters are Scottish rock oysters off Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde, opened natural and dressed with a mignonette. The kitchen makes its own haggis, and general manager Michael Eaton told the Scotsman they took up the idea after eating the version at Stravaigin in Glasgow. Six cask handpulls run mostly Scottish, with a house pale ale brewed for the pub by Broughton. All of it is served inside a room CAMRA grades Three Star on its National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors, a pub interior of outstanding national historic importance
, A-listed since 1970 after a petition stopped the then owners selling the building to Woolworths.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: six natural oysters and a bloody Mary beside them. That pairing is the house steer for anyone eating their first one, and Eaton explains why it works:
It's a nice easy way to try one, because you can wash it down with something.
2 They have started serving them alongside martinis as well. - Order: the 200 Years seafood platter while the bicentenary menu runs, which puts lobster, langoustines and razor clams on one tray.6
- Avoid: wandering off the shellfish. Harden's, summarising its diner survey, puts it flatly:
Seafood dishes and platters are the best choices here.
4
What locals & experts say
- Harden's (current survey):
The finest selection of oysters and mussels
,exquisite seafood platters
,a cracking wine selection with some big hitters
. The editor's own framing is cooler, keeping the listingas much as a cultural experience as it is a culinary one
.4 - Richard Bath, The Scotsman (2012), rated 5/10:
Ultimately, though, this was a meal that didn't do justice to the surroundings.
His companion scored it out loud at the table:For atmosphere, nine out of ten; for food, a five, as I'm feeling generous; for service, a one.
That review is fourteen years old and nobody has scored the food since, so treat it as the last hard number anyone put on this kitchen, dated 2012.3 - CAMRA, National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors (surveyed January 2026): the six Doulton tiled murals were designed by John Eyre and painted by Katherine Sturgeon and W. J. W. Nunn, and behind the 1901 walnut screen the Oyster Bar keeps eight stained-glass windows of British sportsmen by Ballantine & Gardiner of Edinburgh.1
- Rosalind Erskine, The Scotsman (2026): the tile portraits
were made for the Edinburgh International Exhibition of 1886, which was held in the Meadows
, bought afterward by the architect James Macintyre Henry, which makes them a rare surviving piece of that exhibition. She also records that the wood-panelled Oyster Bar played a high-end London restaurant in the 1981 film Chariots of Fire.5
Good to know
- Timing: the bar runs 11am to 11pm and the restaurant stops serving earlier, around 9.30pm. Check the venue site for the day you want.
- Booking: the back room is the one to reserve. Harden's diner note is blunt about it:
Best to reserve the seated Oyster Bar through the back.
4 The front bar is walk-in and it fills, and Eaton says tour companies block-book most months. - Access and age limits: under-18s are not admitted to the bar at all, children of five and over are fine in the restaurant, and the venue states it has no accessible toilets.
- Busy periods: the oyster count can treble in August and again over Christmas on the general manager's own figures, and the front bar fills to match.2
- Price: Harden's records a house bottle of wine around GBP 30 and a 12.5 percent service charge, which is the pub end of city-center pricing.
- Getting there: West Register Street is a short lane off the east end of Princes Street, two minutes from Waverley.
- Ownership: Greene King's Metropolitan Pub Company.6
- Hygiene: Food Hygiene Information Scheme Pass, inspected 5 March 2026.
Jeff's take (his words)
The case for it rests on the CAMRA grading of the room and on the oyster trade the general manager put numbers to.
Verdict
should-visit — Two things here are worth rearranging an afternoon for. The first is the shellfish: Cumbrae rock oysters at about a thousand a week, opened natural with a mignonette, which is a working oyster counter. The second is the room, which CAMRA grades Three Star on its National Inventory, the top band, and which has been A-listed since 1970. Beyond the seafood the kitchen is uneven on the evidence available, so the send is oysters and a bloody Mary at the bar, or the back room booked for a platter. It does not reach must-visit because the last time anyone scored the cooking it came back a five out of ten, and a rung that high has to rest on the craft.